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September 30, 2002 ~ My Grandmother's Death
Monday.
I was notified last night that my maternal grandmother died early Friday morning. Pneumonia (after a several-year long decline in health in a nursing home). It has been almost four years since I last saw her. Living a continent away from my whole family is often hard, but never so hard as when I lose one of them and am not even there to see the loss. I wish I had had time to visit her in January 2000 when I had come back to Oregon to visit and to introduce Morgan (at that time my fiancé) to everyone. We never made it out to see her. She never met my husband before she died. I regret that.
Is it possible to have visited someone quite frequently throughout your entire life, to have had several conversations with her, but to have not the first clue as to what sort of person she was, what she believed, what she loved? To know her but not really know her? I know plenty of the facts of her life (She had six children, she was adopted, she was Catholic, in her younger years she had painted the beautiful oils that were decorating her and grandpa's house, she played the organ), but I know very little of her. She never talked about herself that I can remember. I know her face perfectly, but her? Not so much. Is that the way it is with most relatives?
You know what's strange? This is going to sound really weird, but my most vivid childhood memory of my grandmother is of her vomiting. The event is actually one of my most vivid childhood memories of all. I think she had pneumonia (it seems as if whenever she was sick, she had pneumonia). She was hospitalized for it, whatever it was. I was very young, and I hadn't been in hospitals very often. My parents had told me that we were going to visit grandma in the hospital, so I took the prettiest paper that I could find and made these intricate paper snowflakes to bring to her, the best that I had ever made.
When we got to the hospital, I drew close to the bed that she was on. She had a dinner tray in front of her. She was very happy to see us. I gave her the snowflakes, and she thanked me and commented on how beautiful they were. And then she threw up all over them. I remember trying very hard not to cry as everyone rushed to clean up the mess. I felt scared, because grandma was very sick, and I also felt a childish anger, because my best snowflakes were ruined and she wouldn't have something pretty to look at in the hospital. I think I was a little scared of grandma after that. Shameful, but true. It's strange what my mind as a child latched onto.
I saw her quiet frequently after that, but never ever saw her. I wish that I had.
I can think of only two memories that gave me a glimpse into her inner self, and it's those memories that I'm latching on to right now. I guess, in a way, I'm trying to use them to get to know her.
When I was in my early teens, my cousin's girlfriend became pregnant. She had the baby, and it was my Grandmother's first great-grandchild. But she refused to acknowledge the baby's existence, and insisted that she had no great-grandchildren. On Christmas, my cousin and his girlfriend showed up on her doorstep with the baby. My grandmother melted on the spot. You could see it in her face; she was instantly transformed into a great-grandmother, never again to deny it. I had never seen her so outwardly happy. She held the baby for a long time, smiling widely, cooing. Everyone else in the room didn't exist; that little baby was the center of her world. It was beautiful. Most of the adults were in the kitchen preparing Christmas dinner, the others were chatting with each other on one side of the living room. My grandmother was in her chair next to the electric organ, holding the baby, beaming, while I sat across the room and just watched her in awe.
The second isn't really a memory of mine. My Grandmother's health began to deteriorate and she had to go to live in a nursing home. Some days when we visited, she was crisp and alert. Other days she was incoherent, mumbling, seeing things. Some days she didn't recognize me, or even my mother, her daughter. But the nurses told my mother a story. There were two little birds (I think they were parakeets? I don't remember) that lived in the entrance lobby to the nursing home. My grandmother would make the trek every day down her long hall, down the elevator, then down the hall of the main floor to the lobby, where she would sit and watch those birds. They made her very happy, said the nurse. After a while, the nurses allowed my grandmother to take over the duties of taking care of the birds. Giving them food, and such. She took that responsibility very seriously. She would always talk about "her" birds. She loved those birds, and took very careful care of them. It was a light to her, I'm sure, in those long, uneventful days in the nursing home.
Those two memories mean a lot to me now, because they are the only glimpses I have beyond Grandma's face. Her funeral will be tomorrow morning, and, since I cannot be there, I will be holding those two memories in mind, her in mind.
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